But, though to speculate upon the future conduct of others underimpending circumstances be but too often to expose the fallacy of ourwisest anticipations, to contemplate the nature of that conduct after ithas been displayed is a useful subject of curiosity, and may perhaps bemade a fruitful source of instruction. Similar events which succeedeach other at different periods are relieved from monotony, and derivenew importance from the ever-varying effects which they produce on thehuman character. Thus, in the great occurrence which forms thefoundation of our narrative, we may find little in the siege of Rome,looking at it as a mere event, to distinguish it remarkably from anyformer siege of the city--the same desire for glory and vengeance,wealth and dominion, which brought Alaric to her walls, brought otherinvaders before him. But if we observed the effect of the Gothicdescent upon Italy on the inhabitants of her capital, we shall findample matter for novel contemplation and unbounded surprise.

We shall perceive, as an astonishing instance of the inconsistencies ofthe human character, the spectacle of a whole people resolutely defyingan overwhelming foreign invasion at their very doors, just at the periodwhen they had fallen most irremediably from the highest position ofnational glory to the lowest depths of national degradation; resistingan all-powerful enemy with inflexible obstinacy, for the honour of theRoman name, which they had basely dishonoured or carelessly forgottenfor ages past. We shall behold men who have hitherto laughed at thevery name of patriotism, now starving resolutely in their country'scause; who stopped at no villainy to obtain wealth, now hesitating toemploy their ill-gotten gains in the purchase of the most important ofall gratifications--their own security and peace. Instances of theunimaginable effect produced by the event of the siege of Rome on thecharacters of her inhabitants might be drawn from all classes, from thelowest to the highest, from patrician to plebeian; but to produce themhere would be to admit too long an interruption in the progress of thepresent narrative. If we are to enter at all into detail on such asubject, it must be only in a case clearly connected with the actualrequirements of our story; and such a case may be found, at thisjuncture, in the conduct of the senator Vetranio, under the influence ofthe worst calamities attending the blockade of Rome by the Goths.

Who, it may be asked, knowing the previous character of this man, hisfrivolity of disposition, his voluptuous anxiety for unremittingenjoyment and ease, his horror of the slightest approaches of afflictionor pain, would have imagined him capable of rejecting in disdain all theminor chances of present security and future prosperity which hisunbounded power and wealth might have procured for him, even in afamine-stricken city, and rising suddenly to the sublime of criminaldesperation, in the resolution to abandon life as worthless the momentit had ceased to run in the easy current of all former years? Yet tothis determination had he now arrived; and, still more extraordinary, inthis determination had he found others, of his own patrician order, tojoin him.

The reader will remember his wild announcement of his intended orgie tothe Prefect Pompeianus during the earlier periods of the siege; thatannouncement was now to be fulfilled. Vetranio had bidden his guests tothe Banquet of Famine. A chosen number of the senators of the greatcity were to vindicate their daring by dying the revellers that they hadlived; by resigning in contempt all prospect of starving, like thecommon herd, on a lessening daily pittance of loathsome food; by makingtheir triumphant exit from a fettered and ungrateful life, drowned infloods of wine, and lighted by the fires of the wealthiest palace ofRome!

It had been intended to keep this frantic determination a profoundsecret, to let the mighty catastrophe burst upon the remaininginhabitants of the city like a prodigy from heaven; but the slavesintrusted with the organisation of the suicide banquet had been bribedto their tasks with wine, and in the carelessness of intoxication hadrevealed to others whatever they heard within the palace walls. Thenews passed from mouth to mouth. There was enough in the prospect ofbeholding the burning palace and the drunken suicide of its desperateguests to animate even the stagnant curiosity of a famishing mob.

On the appointed evening the people dragged their weary limbs from allquarters of the city towards the Pincian Hill. Many of them died on theway; many lost their resolution to proceed to the end of their journey,and took shelter sullenly in the empty houses on the road; many foundopportunities for plunder and crime as they proceeded, which temptedthem from their destination; but many persevered in their purpose--theliving dragging the dying along with them, the desperate driving thecowardly before them in malignant sport, until they gained the palacegates. It was by their voices, as they reached her ear from the street,that the fast-sinking faculties of Antonina had been startled, thoughnot revived; and there, on the broad pavement, lay these citizens of afallen city--a congregation of pestilence and crime--a starving and anawful band!

The moon, brightened by the increasing darkness, now clearly illuminatedthe street, and revealed, in a narrow space, a various and impressivescene.

One side of the roadway in which stood Vetranio's palace was occupied,along each extremity, as far as the eye could reach at night, by thegroves and outbuildings attached to the senator's mansion. The palacegrounds, at the higher and farther end of the street--looking from thePincian Gate--crossed it by a wide archway, and then stretched backward,until they joined the trees of the little garden of Numerian's abode.In a line with this house, but separated from it by a short space, stooda long row of buildings, let out floor by floor to separate occupants,and towering to an unwieldy altitude; for in ancient Rome, as in modernLondon, in consequence of the high price of land in an over-populatedcity, builders could only secure space in a dwelling by addinginconveniently to its height. Beyond these habitations rose the treessurrounding another patrician abode; and beyond that the houses took asudden turn, and nothing more was visible in a straight line but thedusky, indefinite objects of the distant view.

The whole appearance of the street before Vetranio's mansion, had itbeen unoccupied by the repulsive groups now formed in it, would havebeen eminently beautiful at the hours of which we now write. The noblysymmetrical frontage of the palace itself, with its graceful successionof long porticoes and colossal statues, contrasted by the picturesquelyirregular appearance of the opposite dwelling of Numerian and the loftyhouses by its side; the soft, indistinct masses of foliage runningparallel along the upper ends of the street, terminated and connected bythe archway garden across the road, on which was planted a group of tallpine-trees, rising in gigantic relief against the transparent sky; thebrilliant light streaming across the pavement from Vetranio's gaily-curtained windows, immediately opposed by the tranquil moonlight whichlit the more distant view--formed altogether a prospect in which thenatural and the artificial were mingled together in the most exquisiteproportions--a prospect whose ineffable poetry and beauty might, on anyother night, have charmed the most careless eye and exalted the mostfrivolous mind. But now, overspread as it was by groups of people gauntwith famine and hideous with disease; startled as it was, at gloomyintervals, by contending cries of supplication, defiance, and despair--its brightest beauties of Nature and Art appeared but to shine with anaspect of bitter mockery around the human misery which their splendourdisclosed.

Upwards of a hundred people--mostly of the lowest orders--werecongregated before the senator's devoted dwelling. Some few among thempassed slowly to and fro in the street, their figures gliding shadowyand solemn through the light around them; but the greater number lay onthe pavement before the wall of Numerian's dwelling and the doorways ofthe lofty houses by its side. Illuminated by the full glare of thelight from the palace windows, these groups, huddled together in thedistorted attitudes of suffering and despair, assumed a fearful andunearthly appearance. Their shrivelled faces, their tattered clothing,their wan forms, here prostrate, there half-raised, were bathed in asteady red glow. High above them, at the windows of the tall houses,now tenanted in every floor by the dead, appeared a few figures (themercenary guardians of the dying within) bending forward to look outupon the palace opposite--their haggard faces showing pale in the clearmoonlight. Sometimes their voices were heard calling in mockery to themass of people below to break down the strong steel gates of the palace,and tear the full wine-cup from its master's lips. Sometimes thosebeneath replied with execrations, which rose wildly mingled with thewailing of women and children, the moans of the plague-stricken, and thesupplications of the famished to the slaves passing backwards andforwards behind the palace railings for charity and help.

In the intervals, when the tumult of weak voices was partially lulled,there was heard a dull, regular, beating sound, produced by those whohad found dry bones on their road to the palace, and were pounding themon the pavement, in sheltered places, for food. The wind, which hadbeen refreshing during the day, had changed at sunset, and now swept upslowly over the street in hot, faint gusts, plague-laden, from the East.Particles of the ragged clothing on some prostrate forms lying mostexposed in its course waved slowly to and fro, as it passed, likebanners planted by Death on the yielding defences of the citadel ofLife. It wound through the open windows of the palace, hot andmephitic, as if tainted with the breath of the foul and furious wordswhich it bore onward into the banqueting-hall of the senator's recklessguests. Driven over such scenes as now spread beneath it, it derivedfrom them a portentous significance; it seemed to blow like anatmosphere exuded from the furnace-depths of centre earth, breathingsinister warnings of some deadly convulsion in the whole fabric ofNature over the thronged and dismal street.

Such was the prospect before the palace, and such the spectatorsassembled in ferocious anxiety to behold the destruction of thesenator's abode. Meanwhile, within the walls of the building, thebeginning of the fatal orgie was at hand.

It had been covenanted by the slaves (who, during the calamities in thebesieged city, had relaxed in their accustomed implicit obedience totheir master with perfect impunity), that, as soon as the last laboursof preparation were completed, they should be free to consult their ownsafety by quitting the devoted palace. Already some of the weakest andmost timid of their numbers might be seen passing out hastily into thegardens by the back gates, like engineers who had fired a train, andwere escaping ere the explosion burst forth. Those among the menialswho still remained in the palace were for the greater part occupied indrinking from the vases of wine which had been placed before them, topreserved to the last moment their failing strength.

The mockery of festivity had been extended even to their dresses--greenliveries girt with cherry-coloured girdles arrayed their wasted forms.They drank in utter silence. Not the slightest appearance of revelry orintoxication prevailed among their ranks. Confusedly huddled together,as if for mutual protection, they ever and anon cast quick glances ofsuspicion and apprehension upon some six or eight of the superiorattendants of the palace, who walked backwards and forwards at the outerextremity of the hall occupied by their comrades, and occasionallyadvancing along the straight passages before them to the front gates ofthe building, appeared to be exchanging furtive signals with some of thepeople in the street. Reports had been vaguely spread of a secretconspiracy between some of the principal of the slaves and certainchosen ruffians of the populace, to murder all the inmates of thepalace, seize on its treasures, and, opening the city gates to theGoths, escape with their booty during the confusion of the pillage ofRome. Nothing had as yet been positively discovered; but the fewattendants who kept ominously apart from the rest were unanimouslysuspected by their fellows, who now watched them over their wine-cupswith anxious eyes. Different as was the scene among the slaves stillleft in the palace from the scene among the people dispersed in thestreet, the one was nevertheless in its own degree as gloomilysuggestive of some great impending calamity as the other.

The grand banqueting-hall of the palace, prepared though it now was forfestivity, wore a changed and melancholy aspect.

The massive tables still ran down the whole length of the noble room,surrounded by luxurious couches, as in former days, but not a vestige offood appeared upon their glittering surfaces. Rich vases, flasks, anddrinking-cups, all filled with wine, alone occupied the festal board.Above, hanging low from the ceiling, burnt ten large lamps,corresponding to the number of guests assembled, as the only procurablerepresentatives of the hundreds of revellers who had feasted atVetranio's expense during the brilliant nights that were now passed forever. At the lower end of the room, beyond the grand door of entrance,hung a thick black curtain, apparently intended to conceal mysteriouslysome object behind it. Before the curtain burnt a small lamp of yellowglass, raised upon a high gilt pole, and around and beneath it, heapedagainst the side walls, and over part of the table, lay a various andconfused mass of rich objects, all of a nature more or less inflammable,and all besprinkled with scented oils. Hundreds of yards of gorgeouslyvariegated hangings, rolls upon rolls of manuscripts, gaudy dresses ofall colours, toys, utensils, innumerable articles of furniture formed inrare and beautifully inlaid woods, were carelessly flung togetheragainst the walls of the apartment, and rose high towards its ceiling.

On every part of the tables not occupied by the vases of wine were laidgold and jewelled ornaments which dazzled the eye by their brilliancy;while, in extraordinary contrast to the magnificence thus profuselydisplayed, there appeared in one of the upper corners of the hall an oldwooden stand covered by a coarse cloth, on which were placed one or twocommon earthenware bowls, containing what my be termed a 'mash' ofboiled bran and salted horseflesh. Any repulsive odour which might havearisen from this strange compound was overpowered by the variousperfumes sprinkled about the room, which, mingling with the hot breezeswafted through the windows from the street, produced an atmosphere asoppressive and debilitating, in spite of its artificial allurements tothe sense of smell, as the air of a dungeon or the vapours of a marsh.

Remarkable as was the change in the present appearance of thebanqueting-hall, it was but the feeble reflection of the alteration forthe worse in the aspect of the host and his guests. Vetranio reclinedat the head of the table, dressed in a scarlet mantle. An embroideredtowel with purple tassels and fringes, connected with rings of gold,fell over his breast, and silver and ivory bracelets were clasped roundhis arms. But of the former man the habiliments were all that remained.His head was bent forward, as if with the weakness of age; his emaciatedarms seemed barely able to support the weight of the ornaments whichglittered on them; his eyes had contracted a wild, unsettled expression;and a deadly paleness overspread the once plump and jovial cheeks whichso many mistresses had kissed in mercenary rapture in other days. Bothin countenance and manner the elegant voluptuary of our formeracquaintance at the Court of Ravenna was entirely and fatally changed.Of the other eight patricians who lay on the couches around theiraltered host--some wild and reckless, some gloomy and imbecile--all hadsuffered in the ordeal of the siege, the famine, and the pestilence,like him.

Such were the member of the assemblage, represented from the ceiling bynine of the burning lamps. The tenth and last lamp indicated thepresence of one more guest who reclined a little apart from the rest.

This man was hump-backed; his gaunt, bony features were repulsivelydisproportioned to his puny frame, which looked doubly contemptible,enveloped as it was in an ample tawdry robe. Sprung from the lowestranks of the populace, he had gradually forced himself into the favourof his superiors by his skill in coarse mimicry, and his readiness inministering to the worst vices of all who would employ him. Having lostthe greater part of his patrons during the siege, finding himselfabandoned to starvation on all sides, he had now, as a last resource,obtained permission to participate in the Banquet of Famine, to enlivenit by a final exhibition of his buffoonery, and to die with his masters,as he had lived with them--the slave, the parasite, and the imitator ofthe lowest of their vices and the worst of their crimes.

At the commencement of the orgie, little was audible beyond the clash ofthe wine-cups, the low occasional whispering of the revellers, and theconfused voices of the people without, floating through the window fromthe street. The desperate compact of the guests, now that its executionhad actually begun, awed them at first in spite of themselves. Atlength, when there was a lull of all sounds--when a temporary calmprevailed over the noises outside--when the wine-cups were emptied, andleft for a moment ere they were filled again--Vetranio feebly rose, and,announcing with a mocking smile that he was about to speak a funeraloration over his friends and himself, pointed to the wall immediatelybehind him as to an object fitted to awaken the astonishment or thehilarity of his moody guests.

Against the upper part of the wall were fixed various small statues inbronze and marble, all representing the owner of the palace, and allhung with golden plates. Beneath these appeared the rent-roll of hisestates, written in various colours on white vellum, and beneath that,scratched on the marble in faint irregular characters, was no less anobject than his own epitaph, composed by himself. It may be translatedthus:--

Stop, Spectator!

If thou has reverently cultivated the pleasures of the taste, pause amidthese illustrious ruins of what was once a palace, and peruse withrespect on this stone the epitaph of VETRANIO, a senator. He was thefirst man who invented a successful nightingale sauce; his bold andcreative genius added much, and would have added more, to THE ART OFCOOKERY--but, alas for the interests of science! he lived in the dayswhen the Gothic barbarians besieged THE IMPERIAL CITY; famine left himno matter for gustatory experiment; and pestilence deprived him of cooksto enlighten! Opposed at all points by the force of adversecircumstances, finding his life of no further use to the culinaryinterests of Rome, he called his chosen friends together to assist him,conscientiously drank up every drop of wine remaining in his cellars,lit the funeral pile of himself and his guests, in the banqueting-hallof his own palace, and died, as he had lived, the patriotic CATO of hiscountry's gastronomy!

'Behold!' cried Vetranio, pointing triumphantly to the epitaph--'beholdin every line of those eloquent letters at once the seal of my resoluteadherence to the engagement that unites us here, and the foundation ofmy just claim to the reverence of posterity on the most useful of thearts which I exercised for the benefit of my species! Read, friends,brethren, fellow-martyrs of glory, and, as you read, rejoice with meover the hour of our departure from the desecrated arena, no longerworthy the celebration of the Games of Life! Yet, ere the feastproceeds, hear me while I speak--I make my last oration as the arbiterof our funeral sports, as the host of the Banquet of Famine!

'Who would sink ignobly beneath the slow superiority of starvation, orperish under the quickly glancing steel of the barbarian conqueror'ssword, when such a death as ours is offered to the choice?--when wineflows bright, to drown sensation in oblivion, and a palace and itstreasures furnish alike the scene of the revel and the radiant funeralpile? The mighty philosophers of India--the inspired Gymnosophists--died as we shall die! Calanus before Alexander, Zamarus in the presenceof Augustus, lit the fires that consumed them! Let us follow theirglorious example! No worms will prey upon our bodies, no hired mournerswill howl discordant at our funerals! Purified in the radiance ofprimeval fire, we shall vanish triumphant from enemies and friends--amarvel to the earth, a vision of glory to the gods themselves!

'Is it a day more or a day less of life that is now of importance to us?No; it is only towards the easiest and the noblest death that ouraspirations can turn! Among our number there is now not one whom thecare of existence can further occupy!

'Here, at my right hand, reclines my estimable comrade of a thousandformer feasts, Furius Balburius Placidus, who, when we sailed on theLucrine Lake, was wont to complain of intolerable hardship if a flysettled on the gilded folds of his umbrella; who languished for a landof Cimmerian darkness if a sunbeam penetrated the silken awnings of hisgarden-terrace; and who now wrangles for a mouthful of horseflesh withthe meanest of his slaves, and would exchange the richest of his countryvillas for a basket of dirty bread! O Furius Balburius Placidus, ofwhat further use is life to thee?

'There, at my left, I discern the changed though still expressivecountenance of the resolute Thascius, he who chastised a slave with ahundred lashes if his warm water was not brought immediately at hiscommand; he whose serene contempt for every member of the human speciesby himself once ranked him among the greatest of human philosophers;even he now wanders through his palace unserved, and fawns upon theplebeian who will sell him a measure of wretched bran! Oh, admiredfriend, oh, rightly reasoning Thascius, say, is there anything in Romewhich should delay thee on thy journey to the Elysian Fields?

'Farther onward at the table, drinking largely while I speak, I behold,O Marcus Moecius Moemmius, thy once plump and jovial form!--thou, informer days accustomed to rejoice in the length of thy name, because itenabled thy friends to drink the more in drinking a cup to each letterof it, tell me what banqueting-hall is now open to thee but this?--andthus desolate in the city of thy social triumphs, what should disinclinethee to make of our festal solemnity thy last revel on earth?

'Thou, too, facetious hunchback, prince of parasites, unscrupulousReburrus, where, but at this banquet of famine, will thy buffoonery nowprocure for thee a draught of reviving wine? Thy masters have abandonedthee to thy native dunghill! No more shalt thou wheedle for them whenthey borrow, or bully for them when they pay! No more charges ofpoisoning or magic shalt thou forge to imprison their troublesomecreditors! Oh, officious sycophant, thy occupations are no more! Drinkwhile thou canst, and then resign thy carcass to congenial mire!

'And you, my five remaining friends, whom--little desirous of furtherdelay--I will collectively address, think on the days when the suspicionof an infectious malady in any one of your companions was sufficient toseparate you from the dearest of them; when the slaves who came to youfrom their palaces underwent long ceremonies of ablution before theyapproached your presence; and remembering this, reflect that most,perhaps all of us, now meet here plague-tainted already; and then say,of what advantage is it to languish for a life which is yours no longer?

'No, my friends, my brethren of the banquet; feeling that when life isworthless it is folly to live, you cannot shrink from the loftyresolution by which we are bound, you cannot pause on our joyful journeyof departure from the scenes of earth--I wrong you even by a doubt! Letme now, rather, ask your attention for a worthier subject--theenumeration of the festal ceremonies by which the progress of thebanquet will be marked. That task concluded, that last ceremony of mylast welcome to you these halls duly performed, I join you once more inyour final homage to the deity of our social lives--the God of Wine!

'It is not unknown to you--learned as you are in the jovial antiquitiesof the table--that it was, among some of the ancients, a custom for amaster-spirit of philosophy to preside--the teacher as well as theguest--at their feasts. This usage it has been my care to revive, and,as this four meeting is unparalleled in its heroic design, so it was myambition to bid to it one unparalleled, either as a teacher or a guest.Fired by an original idea, unobserved of my slaves, aided only by mysinging-boy, the faithful Glyco, I have succeeded in placing behind thatblack curtain such an associate of our revels as you have never feastedwith before, whose appearance at the fitting moment must strike youirresistibly with astonishment, and whose discourse--not of human wisdomonly--will be inspired by the midnight secrets of the tomb. By my side,on this parchment, lies the formulary of questions to be addressed byReburrus, when the curtain is withdrawn, to the Oracle of the Mysteriesof other Spheres.

'Before you, behold in those vases all that remains of my once well-stocked cellars, and all that is provided for the palates of my guests!We sit at the Banquet of Famine, and no coarser sustenance thaninspiring wine finds admittance at the Bacchanalian board. Yet, shouldany among us, in his last moments, be feeble enough to pollute his lipswith nourishment alone worthy of the vermin of the earth, let him seekthe wretched and scanty table, type of the wretched and scanty food thatcovers it, placed yonder in obscurity behind me. There will he find (inall barely sufficient for one man's poorest meal) the last morsels ofthe vilest nourishment left in the palace. For me, my resolution isfixed--it is only the generous wine-cup that shall now approach my lips!

'Above me are the ten lamps, answering to the number of my friends hereassembled. One after another, as the wine overpowers us, those burningimages of life will be extinguished in succession by the guests whoremain proof against our draughts; and the last of these, lighting thistorch at the last lamp, will consummate the banquet, and celebrate itsglorious close, by firing the funeral pile of my treasures heaped yonderagainst my palace walls! If my powers fail me before yours, swear to methat whoever among you is able to lift the cup to his lips after it hasdropped from the hands of the rest, will fire the pile! Swear it byyour lost mistresses, your lost friends, your lost treasures!--by yourown lives, devoted to the pleasures of wine and the purification offire!'

As, with flashing eyes and flushed countenance, Vetranio sank back onhis couch, his companions, inflamed with the wine they had alreadydrunk, arose cup in hand, and turned towards him. Their voices,discordantly mingled, pronounced the oath together; then, as theyresumed their former positions, their eyes all turned towards the blackcurtain in ardent expectation.

They had observed the sinister and sarcastic expression of Vetranio'seye as he spoke of his concealed guest; they knew that the hunchbackReburrus possessed, among his other powers of buffoonery, the art ofventriloquism; and they suspected the presence of some hideous orgrotesque image of a heathen god or demon in the hidden recess, whichthe jugglery of the parasite was to gift with the capacity of speech.Blasphemous comments upon life, death, and immortality were eagerlyawaited. The general impatience for the withdrawal of the curtain wasperceived by Vetranio, who, waving his hand for silence, authoritativelyexclaimed--

'The hour has not yet arrived. More draughts must be drunk, morelibations poured out, ere the mystery of the curtain is revealed! Ho,Glyco!' he continued, turning towards the singing-boy, who had silentlyentered the room, 'the moment is yours! Tune your lyre, and recite mylast ode, which I have addressed to you! Let the charms of Poetrypreside over the feast of Death!'

The boy advanced, trembling; his once ruddy face was colourless andhaggard; his eyes were fixed with a look of rigid terror on the blackcurtain; his features palpably expressed the presence within him of somesecret and overwhelming recollection which had crushed all his otherfaculties and perceptions. Steadily, almost guiltily, averting his facefrom his master's countenance, he stood by Vetranio's couch, a frail andfallen being, a mournful spectacle of perverted docility and degradedyouth.

Still true, however, to the duties of his vocation, he ran his thin,trembling fingers over the lyre, and mechanically preluded thecommencement of the ode. But during the silence of attention which nowprevailed, the confused noises from the people in the street penetratedmore distinctly into the banqueting-room; and at this moment, high abovethem all--hoarse, raving, terrible, rose the voice of one man.

'Tell me not,' it cried, 'of perfumes wafted from the palace!--foulvapours flow from it!--see, they sink, suffocating over me!--they bathesky and earth, and men who move around us, in fierce, green light!'

Then other voices of men and women, shrill and savage, broke forth ininterruption together:--'Peace, Davus! you awake the dead about you!''Hide in the darkness; you are plague-struck; your skin is shrivelled;your gums are toothless!' 'When the palace is fired you shall be flunginto the flames to purify your rotten carcass!'

'Sing!' cried Vetranio furiously, observing the shudders that ran overthe boy's frame and held him speechless. 'Strike the lyre, as Timotheusstruck it before Alexander! Drown in melody the barking of the curs whowait for our offal in the street!'

Feebly and interruptedly the terrified boy began; the wild continuousnoises of the moaning voices from without sounding their awfulaccompaniment to the infidel philosophy of his song as he breathed itforth in faint and faltering accents. It ran thus:--

TO GLYCO

Ah, Glyco! why in flow'rs array'd? Those festive wreaths less quicklyfade Than briefly-blooming joy! Those high-prized friends who share yourmirth Are counterfeits of brittle earth, False coin'd in Death's alloy!

The bliss your notes could once inspire, When lightly o'er the god-likelyre Your nimble fingers pass'd, Shall spring the same from others'skill--When you're forgot, the music still The player shall outlast!

The sun-touch'd cloud that mounts the sky, That brightly glows to warmthe eye, Then fades we know not where, Is image of the little breath Oflife--and then, the doom of Death That you and I must share!

Helpless to make or mar our birth, We blindly grope the ways of earth,And live our paltry hour; Sure, that when life has ceased to please, Todie at will, in Stoic ease, Is yielded to our pow'r!

Who, timely wise, would meanly wait The dull delay of tardy Fate, WhenLife's delights are shorn? No! When its outer gloss has flown, Let'sfling the tarnish'd bauble down As lightly as 'twas worn.

'A health to Glyco! A deep draught to a singer from heaven come downupon earth!' cried the guests, seizing their wine-cups, as the ode wasconcluded, and draining them to the last drop. But their drunkenapplause fell noiseless upon the ear to which it was addressed. Theboy's voice, as he sang the final stanza of the ode, had suddenlychanged to a shrill, almost an unearthly tone, then suddenly sank againas he breathed forth the last few notes; and now as his dissoluteaudience turned towards him with approving glances, they saw himstanding before them cold, rigid, and voiceless. The next instant hisfixed features were suddenly distorted, his whole frame collapsed as iftorn by an internal spasm--he fell back heavily to the floor. Thosearound approached him with unsteady feet, and raised him in their arms.His soul had burst the bonds of vice in which others had entangled it;the voice of Death had whispered to the slave of the great despot,Crime--'Be free!'

'We have heard the note of the swan singing its own funeral hymn!' saidthe patrician Placidus, looking in maudlin pity from the corpse of theboy to the face of Vetranio, which presented for the moment aninvoluntary expression of grief and remorse.

'Our miracle of beauty and boy-god of melody has departed before us tothe Elysian fields!' muttered the hunchback Reburrus, in harsh,sarcastic accents.

Then, during the short silence that ensued, the voices from the street,joined on this occasion to a noise of approaching footsteps on thepavement, became again distinctly audible in the banqueting-hall.'News! news!' cried these fresh auxiliaries of the horde alreadyassembled before the palace. 'Keep together, you who still care for yourlives! Solitary citizens have been lured by strange men into desolatestreets, and never seen again! Jars of newly salted flesh, which therewere no beasts left in the city to supply, have been found in abutcher's shop! Keep together! Keep together!'

'No cannibals among the mob shall pollute the body of my poor boy!'cried Vetranio, rousing himself from his short lethargy of grief. 'Ho!Thascius! Marcus! you who can yet stand! let us bear him to the funeralpile! He has died first--his ashes shall be first consumed!'

The two patricians arose as the senator spoke, and aided him in carryingthe body to the lower end of the room, where it was laid across thetable, beneath the black curtain, and between the heaps of drapery andfurniture piled up against each of the walls. Then, as his guestsreeled back to their places, Vetranio, remaining by the side of thecorpse, and seizing in his unsteady hands a small vase of wine,exclaimed in tones of fierce exultation: 'The hour has come--theBanquet of Famine has ended--the Banquet of Death has begun! A healthto the guest behind the curtain! Fill--drink--behold!'

He drank deeply from the vase as he ceased, and drew aside the blackdrapery above him. A cry of terror and astonishment burst from theintoxicated guests as they beheld in the recess now disclosed to viewthe corpse of an aged woman, clothed in white, and propped up on a high,black throne, with the face turned towards them, and the arms(artificially supported) stretched out as if in denunciation over thebanqueting-table. The lamp of yellow glass, which burnt high above thebody, threw over it a lurid and flickering light; the eyes were open,the jaw had fallen, the long grey tresses drooped heavily on either sideof the white hollow cheeks.

'Behold!' cried Vetranio, pointing to the corpse--'Behold my secretguest! Who so fit as the dead to preside at the Banquet of Death?Compelling the aid of Glyco, shrouded by congenial night, seizing on thefirst corpse exposed before me in the street, I have set up there,unsuspected by all, the proper idol of our worship, and philosopher atour feast! Another health to the queen of the fatal revels--to theteacher of the mysteries of worlds unseen--rescued from rottingunburied, to perish in the consecrated flames with the senators of Rome!A health!--a health to the mighty mother, ere she begin the mysticrevelations! Fill--drink!'

Fired by their host's example, recovered from their momentary awe,already inflamed by the mad recklessness of debauchery, the guestsstarted from their couches, and with Bacchanalian shouts answeredVetranio's challenge. The scene at this moment approached thesupernatural. The wild disorder of the richly laden tables; the wineflowing over the floor from overthrown vases; the great lamps burningbright and steady over the confusion beneath; the fierce gestures, thedisordered countenances of the revellers, as they waved their jewelledcups over their heads in frantic triumph; and then the gloomy andterrific prospect at the lower end of the hall--the black curtain, thelight burning solitary on its high pole, the dead boy lying across thefestal table, the living master standing by his side, and, like an evilspirit, pointing upward in mockery to the white-robed corpse of thewoman, as it towered above all in its unnatural position, with itsskinny arms stretched forth, with its ghastly features appearing to moveas the faint and flickering light played over them,--produced togethersuch a combination of scarce-earthly objects as might be painted, butcannot be described. It was an embodiment of a sorcerer's vision--anapocalypse of sin triumphing over the world's last relics of mortalityin the vaults of death.

For some time before the disclosure of the corpse, the hunchback hadbeen seated apart at the end of the banqueting-hall opposite the black-curtained recess, conning over the manuscript containing the list ofquestions and answers which formed the impious dialogue he was to hold,by the aid of his powers of ventriloquism, with the violated dead. Whenthe curtain was withdrawn he had looked up for a moment, and had greetedthe appearance of the sight behind it with a laugh of brutal derision,returning immediately to the study of his blasphemous formulary whichhad been confided to his care. At the moment when Vetranio's commandswere addressed to him he arose, reeled down the apartment towards thecorpse, and, opening the dialogue as he approached it, began in loudjeering tones: 'Speak, miserable relict of decrepit mortality!'

He paused as he uttered the last word, and gaining a point of view fromwhich the light of the lamp fell full upon the solemn and stony featuresof the corpse, looked up defiantly at it. In an instant a frightfulchange passed over him, the manuscript dropped from his hand, hisdeformed frame shrank and tottered, a shrill cry of recognition burstfrom his lips, more like the yell of a wild beast than the voice of aman.

The next moment, when the guests started up to question or deride him,he turned slowly and faced them. Desperate and drunken as they were,his look awed them into utter silence. His face was deathlike in hue,as the face of the corpse above him--thick drops of perspirationtrickled down it like rain--his dry glaring eyes wandered fiercely overthe startled countenances before him, and, as he extended towards themhis clenched hands, he muttered in a deep gasping whisper: 'Who hasdone this? MY MOTHER! MY MOTHER!'

As these few words--of awful import though of simple form--fell upon theears of those whom he addressed, such of them as were not already sunkin insensibility looked round on each other almost sobered for themoment, and all speechless alike. Not even the clash of the wine-cupswas now heard at the banqueting-table--nothing was audible but thesound, still fitfully rising and falling, of the voices of terror,ribaldry, and anguish from the street; and the hoarse convulsive accentsof the hunchback, still uttering at intervals his fearful identificationof the dead body above him: 'MY MOTHER! MY MOTHER!'

At length Vetranio, who was the first to recover himself, addressed theterrified and degraded wretch before him, in tones which, in spite ofhimself, betrayed, as he began, an unwonted tremulousness and restraint.'What, Reburrus!' he cried, 'are you already drunken to insanity, thatyou call the first dead body which by chance I encountered in thestreet, and by chance brought hither, your mother?Was it to talk of your mother, whom dead or alive we neither know norcare for, that you were admitted here? Son of obscurity and inheritorof rags, what are your plebeian parents to us!' he continued, refillinghis cup, and lashing himself into assumed anger as he spoke. 'To yourdialogue without delay, or you shall be flung from the windows to minglewith your rabble-equals in the street!'

Neither by word nor look did the hunchback answer the senator's menaces.For him, the voice of the living was stifled in the presence of thedead. The retribution that had gone forth against him had struck hismoral, as a thunderbolt might have stricken his physical being. Hissoul strove in agony within him, as he thought on the awful fatalitywhich had set the dead mother in judgment on the degraded son--which haddirected the hand of the senator unwittingly to select the corpse of theoutraged parent as the object for the infidel buffoonery of the recklesschild, at the very close of his impious career. His past life rosebefore him, for the first time, like a foul vision, like a nightmare ofhorror, impurity, and crime. He staggered up the room, groping his wayalong the wall, as if the darkness of midnight had closed round hiseyes, and crouched down by the open window. Beneath him rose the eviland ominous voices from the street; around him spread the pitiless arrayof his masters; before him appeared the denouncing vision of the corpse.

He would have remained but a short time unmolested in his place ofrefuge, but for an event which now diverted from him the attention ofVetranio and his guests. Drinking furiously to drown all recollectionof the catastrophe they had just witnessed, three of the revellers hadalready suffered the worst consequences of an excess, which theirweakened frames were ill-fitted to bear. One after another, at shortintervals, they fell back senseless on their couches; and one afteranother, as they succumbed, the three lamps burning nearest to them wereextinguished. The same speedy termination to the debauch seemed to bein reserve for the rest of their companions, with the exception ofVetranio and the two patricians who reclined at his right hand and hisleft. These three still preserved the appearance of self-possession,but an ominous change had already overspread their countenances. Theexpression of wild joviality, of fierce recklessness, had departed fromtheir wild features; they silently watched each other with vigilant andsuspicious eyes; each in turn, as he filled his wine-cup, significantlyhandled the torch with which the last drinker was to fire the funeralpile. As the numbers of their rivals decreased, and the flame of lampafter lamp was extinguished, the fatal contest for a suicide supremacyassumed a present and powerful interest, in which all other purposes andobjects were forgotten. The corpse at the foot of the banqueting-table,and the wretch cowering in his misery at the window, were now alikeunheeded. In the bewildered and brutalised minds of the guests, onesensation alone remained--the intensity of expectation which precedesthe result of a deadly strife.

But ere long--awakening the attention which might otherwise never havebeen aroused--the voice of the hunchback was heard, as the spirit ofrepentance now moved within him, uttering, in wild, moaning tones, astrange confession of degradation and sin--addressed to none;proceeding, independent of consciousness or will, from the depths of hisstricken soul. He half raised himself, and fixed his sunken eyes uponthe dead body, as these words dropped from his lips: 'It was the lasttime that I beheld her alive, when she approached me--lonely, andfeeble, and poor--in the street, beseeching me to return to her in thedays of her old age and her solitude, and to remember how she had lovedme in my childhood for my very deformity, how she had watched methroughout the highways of Rome, that none should oppress or deride me!The tears ran down her cheeks, she knelt to me on the hard pavement, andI, who had deserted her for her poverty, to make myself a slave inpalaces among the accursed rich, flung down money to her as to a beggarwho wearied me, and passed on! She died desolate; her body layunburied, and I knew it not! The son who had abandoned the mother neversaw her more, until she rose before him there--avenging, horrible,lifeless--a sight of death never to leave him! Woe, woe to the accursedin his deformity, and the accursed of his mother's corpse!'

He paused, and fell back again to the ground, grovelling and speechless.The tyrannic Thascius, regarding him with a scowl of drunken wrath,seized an empty vase, and poising it in his unsteady hand, prepared tohurl it at the hunchback's prostrate form, when again a single cry--awoman's--rising above the increasing uproar in the street, rang shrilland startling through the banqueting-hall. The patrician suspended hispurpose as he heard it, mechanically listening with the half-stupid,half-cunning attention of intoxication. 'Help! help!' shrieked thevoice beneath the palace windows--'he follows me still--he attacked mydead child in my arms! As I flung myself down upon it on the ground, Isaw him watching his opportunity to drag it by the limbs from under me--famine and madness were in his eyes--I drove him back--I fled--hefollows me still!--save us, save us!'

At this instant her voice was suddenly stifled in the sound of fiercecries and rushing footsteps, followed by an appalling noise of heavyblows, directed at several points, against the steel railings before thepalace doors. Between the blows, which fell slowly and together atregular intervals, the infuriated wretches, whose last exertions ofstrength were strained to the utmost to deal them, could be heardshouting breathlessly to each other: 'Strike harder, strike harder! theback gates are guarded against us by our comrades admitted to thepillage of the palace instead of us. You who would share the booty,strike firm! the stones are at your feet, the gates of entrance yieldbefore you.'

Meanwhile a confused sound of trampling footsteps and contending voicesbecame audible from the lower apartments of the palace. Doors wereviolently shut and opened--shouts and execrations echoed and re-echoedalong the lofty stone passages leading from the slaves' waiting-rooms tothe grand staircase; treachery betrayed itself as openly within thebuilding as violence still proclaimed itself in the assault on the gatesoutside. The chief slaves had not been suspected by their fellowswithout a cause; the bands of pillage and murder had been organised inthe house of debauchery and death; the chosen adherents from the streethad been secretly admitted through the garden gates, and had barred andguarded them against further intrusion--another doom than the doom theyhad impiously prepared for themselves was approaching the devotedsenators, at the hands of the slaves whom they had oppressed, and theplebeians whom they had despised.

At the first sound of the assault without and the first intimation ofthe treachery within, Vetranio, Thascius, and Marcus started from theircouches; the remainder of the guests, incapable either of thought oraction, lay, in stupid insensibility, awaiting their fate. These threemen alone comprehended the peril that threatened them, and, maddenedwith drink, defied, in their ferocious desperation, the death that wasin store for them. 'Hark! they approach, the rabble revolted from ourrule,' cried Vetranio scornfully, 'to take the lives that we despise andthe treasures that we have resigned! The hour has come; I go to firethe pile that involves in one common destruction our assassins andourselves!'

'Hold!' exclaimed Thascius, snatching the torch from his hand; 'theentrance must first be defended, or, ere the flames are kindled, theslaves will be here! Whatever is movable--couches, tables, corpses--letus hurl them all against the door!'

As he spoke he rushed towards the black-curtained recess, to set theexample to his companions by seizing the corpse of the woman; but he hadnot passed more than half the length of the apartment, when thehunchback, who had followed him unheeded, sprang upon him from behind,and, with a shrill cry, fastening his fingers on his throat, hurled himtorn and senseless to the floor. 'Who touches the body that is mine?'shrieked the deformed wretch, rising from his victim, and threateningwith his blood-stained hands Vetranio and Marcus, as they stoodbewildered, and uncertain for the moment whether first to avenge theircomrade or to barricade the door--'The son shall rescue the mother! Igo to bury her! Atonement! Atonement!'

He leaped upon the table as he spoke, tore asunder with resistlessstrength the cords which fastened the corpse to the throne, seized it inhis arms, and the next instant gained the door. Uttering fierce,inarticulate cries, partly of anguish and partly of defiance, he threwit open, and stepped forward to descend, when he was met at the head ofthe stairs by the band of assassins hurrying up, with drawn swords andblazing torches, to their work of pillage and death. He stood beforethem--his deformed limbs set as firmly on the ground as if he werepreparing to descend the stairs at one leap--with the corpse raised highon his breast; its unearthly features were turned towards them, its barearms were still stretched forth as they had been extended over thebanqueting-table, its grey hair streamed back and mingled with his own:under the fitful illumination of the torches, which played red and wildover him and his fearful burden, the dead and the living looked joinedto each other in one monstrous form.

Huddled together, motionless, on the stairs, their shouts of vengeanceand fury frozen on their lips, the assassins stood for one moment,staring mechanically, with fixed, spell-bound eyes, upon the hideousbulwark opposing their advance on the victims whom they had expected soeasily to surprise. The next instant a superstitious panic seized them;as the hunchback suddenly moved towards them to descend, the corpseseemed to their terror-stricken eyes to be on the eve of bursting itsway through their ranks. Ignorant of its introduction into the palace,imagining it, in the revival of their slavish fears, to be the spectraloffspring of the magic incantations of the senators above, they turnedwith one accord and fled down the stairs. The sound of their cries offear grew fainter and fainter in the direction of the garden as theyhurried through the secret gates at the back of the building. Then theheavy, regular tamp of the hunchback's footsteps, as he paced thesolitary corridors after them, bearing his burden of death, becameaudible in awful distinctness; then that sound also died away and waslost, and nothing more was heard in the banqueting-room save the sharpclang of the blows still dealt against the steel railings from thestreet.

But now these grew rare and more rare in their recurrence; the strongmetal resisted triumphantly the utmost efforts of the exhausted rabblewho assailed it. As the minutes moved on, the blows grew rapidlyfainter and fewer; soon they diminished to three, struck at longintervals; soon to one, followed by deep execrations of despair; and,after that, a great silence sank down over the palace and the street,where such strife and confusion had startled the night-echoes but a fewmoments before.

In the banqueting-hall this rapid succession of events--the marvels of afew minutes--passed before Vetranio and Marcus as visions beheld bytheir eyes, but neither contained nor comprehended by their minds.Stolid in their obstinate recklessness, stupefied by the spectacle ofthe startling perils--menacing yet harmless, terrifying thoughtransitory--which surrounded them, neither of the senators moved amuscle or uttered a word, from the period when Thascius had fallenbeneath the hunchback's attack, to the period when the last blow againstthe palace railings, and the last sound of voices from the street, hadceased in silence. Then the wild current of drunken exultation,suspended within them during this brief interval, flowed once more,doubly fierce, in its old course. Insensible, the moment after they hadpassed away, to the warning and terrific scenes they had beheld, eachnow looked round on the other with a glance of triumphant levity.'Hark!' cried Vetranio, 'the mob without, feeble and cowardly to thelast, abandon their puny efforts to force my palace gates! Behold ourbanqueting-tables still sacred from the intrusion of the revoltedmenials, driven before my guest from the dead, like a flock of sheepbefore a single dog! Say, O Marcus! did I not well to set the corpse atthe foot of our banqueting-table? What marvels has it not effected,borne before us by the frantic Reburrus, as a banner of the hosts ofdeath, against the cowardly slaves whose fit inheritance is oppression,and whose sole sensation is fear! See, we are free to continue andconclude the banquet as we had designed! The gods themselves haveinterfered to raise us in security above our fellow-mortals, whom wedespise! Another health, in gratitude to our departed guest, theinstrument of our deliverance, under the auspices of omnipotent Jove!'

As Vetranio spoke, Marcus alone, out of all the revellers, answered hischallenge. These two--the last-remaining combatants of the strife--having drained their cups to the health proposed, passed slowly downeach side of the room, looking contemptuously on their prostratecompanions, and extinguishing every lamp but the two which burnt overtheir own couches. Then returning to the upper end of the tables, theyresumed their places, not to leave them again until the fatal rivalrywas finally decided, and the moment of firing the pile had actuallyarrived.

The torch lay between them; the last vases of wine stood at their sides.Not a word escaped the lips of either, to break the deep stillnessprevailing over the palace. Each fixed his eyes on the other, in sternand searching scrutiny, and cup for cup, drank in slow and regularalternation. The debauch, which had hitherto presented a spectacle ofbrutal degradation and violence, now that it was restricted to two menonly--each equally unimpressed by the scenes of horror he had beheld,each vying with the other for the attainment of the supreme ofdepravity--assumed an appearance of hardly human iniquity; it became acontest for a satanic superiority of sin.

For some time little alteration appeared in the countenances of eitherof the suicide-rivals; but they had now drunk to that final point ofexcess at which wine either acts as its own antidote, or overwhelms infatal suffocation the pulses of life. The crisis in the strife wasapproaching for both, and the first to experience it was Marcus.Vetranio, as he watched him, observed a dark purple flush overspreadinghis face, hitherto pale, almost colourless. His eyes suddenly dilated;he panted for breath. The vase of wine, when he strove with a lasteffort to fill his cup from it, rolled from his hand to the floor. Thestare of death was in his face as he half-raised himself and for oneinstant looked steadily on his companion; the moment after, without wordor groan, he dropped backward over his couch.

The contest of the night was decided! The host of the banquet and themaster of the palace had been reserved to end the one and to fire theother!

A smile of malignant triumph parted Vetranio's lips as he now arose andextinguished the last lamp burning besides his own. That done, hegrasped the torch. His eyes, as he raised it, wandered dreamily overthe array of his treasures, and the forms of his dead or insensiblefellow-patricians around him, to be consumed by his act in annihilatingfire. The sensation of his solemn night-solitude in his fated palacebegan to work in vivid and varying impressions on his mind, which waspartially recovering some portion of its wonted acuteness, under thebodily reaction now produced in him by the very extravagance of thenight's excess. His memory began to retrace confusedly the scenes withwhich the dwelling that he was about to destroy had been connected atdistant or at recent periods. At one moment the pomp of formerbanquets, the jovial congregation of guests since departed or dead,revived before him; at another, he seemed to be acting over again hissecret departure from his dwelling on the night before his last feast,his stealthy return with the corpse that he had dragged from the street,his toil in setting it up in mockery behind the black curtain, andinventing the dialogue to be spoken before it by the hunchback. Now histhoughts reverted to the minutest circumstances of the confusion anddismay among the members of his household when the first extremities ofthe famine began to be felt in the city; and now, without visibleconnection or cause, they turned suddenly to the morning when he hadhurried through the most solitary paths in his grounds to meet thebetrayer Ulpius at Numerian's garden gate. Once more the image ofAntonina--so often present to his imagination since the original waslost to his eyes--grew palpable before him. He thought of her, aslistening at his knees to the sound of his lute; as awakening,bewildered and terrified, in his arms; as flying distractedly before herfather's wrath; as now too surely lying dead, in her beauty and herinnocence, amid the thousand victims of the famine and the plague.

These and other reflections, while they crowded in whirlwind rapidity onhis mind, wrought no alteration in the deadly purpose which theysuspended. His delay in lighting the torch was the unconscious delay ofthe suicide, secure in his resolution ere he lifts the poison to hislips--when life rises before him as a thing that is past, and he standsfor one tremendous moment in the dark gap between the present and thefuture--no more the pilgrim of Time--not yet the inheritor of Eternity!

So, in the dimly lighted hall, surrounded by the victims whom he hadhurried before him to their doom, stood the lonely master of the greatpalace; and so spoke within him the mysterious voices of his lastearthly thoughts. Gradually they sank and ceased, and stillness andvacancy closed like dark veils over his mind. Starting like oneawakened from a trance he once more felt the torch in his hand, and oncemore the expression of fierce desperation appeared in his eyes as he litit steadily at the lamp above him.

The dew was falling pure to the polluted earth; the light breezes sangtheir low daybreak anthem among the leaves to the Power that bade themforth; night had expired, and morning was already born of it, asVetranio, with the burning torch in his hand, advanced towards thefuneral pile.

He had already passed the greater part of the length of the room, when afaint sound of footsteps ascending a private staircase which led to thepalace gardens, and communicated with the lower end of the banqueting-hall by a small door of inlaid ivory, suddenly attracted his attention.He hesitated in his deadly purpose, listening to the slow, regularapproaching sound, which, feeble though it was, struck mysteriouslyimpressive upon his ear in the dreary silence of all things around him.Holding the torch high above his head, as the footsteps came nearer, hefixed his eyes in intense expectation upon the door. It opened, and thefigure of a young girl clothed in white stood before him. One moment helooked upon her with startled eyes; the next the torch dropped from hishand, and smouldered unheeded on the marble floor. It was Antonina!

Her face was overspread with a strange transparent paleness; her oncesoft, round cheeks had lost their girlish beauty of form; herexpression, ineffably mournful, hopeless, and subdued, threw a simple,spiritual solemnity over her whole aspect. She was changed, awfullychanged to the profligate senator from the being of his formeradmiration; but still there remained in her despairing eyes enough ofthe old look of gentleness and patience, surviving through all anguishand dread, to connect her, even as she was now, with what she had been.She stood in the chamber of debauchery and suicide between the funeralpile and the desperate man who was vowed to fire it, a feeble, helplesscreature, yet powerful in the influence of her presence, at such amoment and in such a form, as a saving and reproving spirit, armed withthe omnipotence of Heaven to mould the purposes of man.

Awed and astounded, as if he beheld an apparition from the tomb,Vetranio looked upon this young girl--whom he had loved with the leastselfish passion that ever inspired him; whom he had lamented as longsince lost and dead with the sincerest grief he had ever felt; whom henow saw standing before him at the very moment ere he doomed himself todeath, altered, desolate, supplicating--with emotions which held himspeechless in wonder, and even in dread. While he still gazed upon herin silence, he heard her speaking to him in low, melancholy, imploringaccents, which fell upon his ear, after the voices of terror anddesperation that had risen around him throughout the night, like tonesnever addressed to it before.

'Numerian, my father, is sinking under the famine,' she began; 'if nohelp is given to him, he may die even before sunrise! You are rich andpowerful; I have come to you, having nothing now but his life to livefor, to beg sustenance for him!' She paused, overpowered for themoment, and bent her eyes wistfully on the senator's face. Then seeingthat he vainly endeavoured to answer her, her head drooped upon herbreast, and her voice sank lower as she continued:--

'I have striven for patience under much sorrow and pain through the longnight that is past; my eyes were heavy and my spirit was faint; I couldhave rendered up my soul willingly in my loneliness and feebleness toGod who gave it, but that it was my duty to struggle for my life and myfather's, now that I was restored to him after I had lost all beside! Icould not think, or move, or weep, as, looking forth upon your palace, Iwatched and waited through the hours of darkness. But, as morningdawned, the heaviness at my heart was lightened; I remembered that thepalace I saw before me was yours; and, though the gates were closed, Iknew that I could reach it through your garden that joins to my father'sland. I had none in Rome to ask mercy of but you; so I set forthhastily, ere my weakness should overpower me, remembering that I hadinherited much misery at your hands, but hoping that you might pity mefor what I had suffered when you saw me again. I came wearily throughthe garden; it was long before I found my way hither; will you send meback as helpless as I came? You first taught me to disobey my father ingiving me the lute; will you refuse to aid me in succouring him now? Heis all that I have left in the world! Have mercy upon him!--have mercyupon me!'

Again she looked up in Vetranio's face. His trembling lips moved, butstill no sound came from them. The expression of confusion and awe yetprevailed over his features as he pointed slowly towards the upper endof the banqueting-table. To her this simple action was eloquent beyondall power of speech; she turned her feeble steps instantly in thedirection he had indicated.

He watched her, by the light of the single lamp that still burnt,passing--strong in the shielding inspiration of her good purpose--amidthe bodies of his suicide companions without pausing on her way. Havinggained the upper end of the room, she took from the table a flask ofwine, and from the wooden stand behind it the bowl of offal disdained bythe guests at the fatal banquet, returning immediately to the spot whereVetranio still stood. Here she stopped for a moment, as if about tospeak once more; but her emotions overpowered her. From the sourceswhich despair and suffering had dried up, the long-prisoned tears oncemore flowed forth at the bidding of gratitude and hope. She looked uponthe senator, silent as himself, and her expression at that instant wasdestined to remain on his memory while memory survived. Then, withfaltering and hasty steps, she departed by the way she had come; and inthe great palace, which his evil supremacy over the wills of others hadmade a hideous charnel-house, he was once more left alone.

He made no effort to follow or detain her as she left him. The torchstill smouldered beside him on the floor, but he never stooped to takeit up; he dropped down on a vacant couch, stupefied by what he hadbeheld. That which no entreaties, no threats, no fierce violence ofopposition could have effected in him, the appearance of Antonina hadproduced--it had forced him to pause at the very moment of the executionof his deadly design.

He remembered how, from the very first day when he had seen her, she hadmysteriously influenced the whole progress of his life; how his ardourto possess her had altered his occupations, and even interrupted hisamusements; how all his energy and all his wealth had been baffled inthe attempt to discover her when she fled from her father's house; howthe first feeling of remorse that he had ever known had been awakenedwithin him by his knowledge of the share he had had in producing herunhappy fate. Recalling all this; reflecting that, had she approachedhim at an earlier period, she would have been driven back affrighted bythe drunken clamour of his companions; and had she arrived at a later,would have found his palace in flames; thinking at the same time of hersudden presence in the banqueting-hall when he had believed her to bedead, when her appearance at the moment before he fired the pile wasmost irresistible in its supernatural influence over his actions--thatvague feeling of superstitious dread which exists intuitively in allmen's minds, which had never before been aroused in his, thrilledthrough him. His eyes were fixed on the door by which she had departed,as if he expected her to return. Her destiny seemed to be portentouslymingled with his own; his life seemed to move, his death to wait at herbidding. There was no repentance, no moral purification in the emotionswhich now suspended his bodily faculties in inaction; he was struck forthe time with a mental paralysis.

The restless moments moved onward and onward, and still he delayed theconsummation of the ruin which the night's debauch had begun. Slowlythe tender daylight grew and brightened in its beauty, warmed the coldprostrate bodies in the silent hall, and dimmed the faint glow of thewasting lamp; no black mist of smoke, no red glare of devouring firearose to quench its fair lustre; no roar of flames interrupted themurmuring morning tranquillity of nature, or startled from their heavyrepose the exhausted outcasts stretched upon the pavement of the street.Still the noble palace stood unshaken on its firm foundations; still theadornments of its porticoes and its statues glittered as of old in therays of the rising sun; and still the hand of the master who had swornto destroy it, as he had sworn to destroy himself, hung idly near thetorch which lay already extinguished in harmless ashes at his feet.

CHAPTER 23. THE LAST EFFORTS OF THE BESIEGED.

We return to the street before the palace. The calamities of the siegehad fallen fiercely on those who lay there during the night. From theturbulent and ferocious mob of a few hours since, not even the sound ofa voice was now heard. Some, surprised in a paroxysm of hunger byexhaustion and insensibility, lay with their hands half forced intotheir mouths, as if in their ravenous madness they had endeavoured toprey upon their own flesh. Others now and then wearily opened theirlanguid eyes upon the street, no longer regardful, in the presentextremity of their sufferings, of the building whose destruction theyhad assembled to behold, but watching for a fancied realisation of thevisions of richly spread tables and speedy relief called up before them,as if in mockery, by the delirium of starvation and disease.

The sun had as yet but slightly risen above the horizon, when theattention of the few among the populace who still preserved someperception of outward events was suddenly attracted by the appearance ofan irregular procession--composed partly of citizens and partly ofofficers of the Senate, and headed by two men--which slowly approachedfrom the end of the street leading into the interior of the city. Thisassembly of persons stopped opposite Vetranio's palace; and then suchmembers of the mob who watched them as were not yet entirely abandonedby hope, heard the inspiring news that the procession they beheld was aprocession of peace, and that the two men who headed it were theSpaniard, Basilius, a governor of a province, and Johannes, the chief ofthe Imperial notaries--appointed ambassadors to conclude a treaty withthe Goths.

As this intelligence reached them, men who had before appeared incapableof the slightest movement now rose painfully, yet resolutely, to theirfeet, and crowded round the two ambassadors as round two angelsdescended to deliver them from bondage and death. Meanwhile, someofficers of the Senate, finding the front gates of the palace closedagainst them, proceeded to the garden entrance at the back of thebuilding, to obtain admission to its owner. The absence of Vetranio andhis friends from the deliberations of the government had been attributedto their disgust at the obstinate and unavailing resistance offered tothe Goths. Now, therefore, when submission had been resolved upon, ithad been thought both expedient and easy to recall them peremptorily totheir duties. In addition to this motive for seeking the interior ofthe palace, the servants of the Senate had another errand to performthere. The widely rumoured determination of Vetranio and his associatesto destroy themselves by fire, in the frenzy of a last debauch--disbelieved or disregarded while the more imminent perils of the citywere under consideration--became a source of some apprehension andanxiety to the acting members of the Roman council, now that their mindswere freed from part of the responsibility which had weighed on them, bytheir resolution to treat for peace.

Accordingly, the persons now sent into the palace were charged with theduty of frustrating its destruction, if such an act had been reallycontemplated, as well as the duty of recalling its inmates to theirappointed places in the Senate-house. How far they were enabled, at thetime of their entrance into the banqueting-hall, to accomplish theirdouble mission, the reader is well able to calculate. They foundVetranio still in the place which he had occupied since Antonina hadquitted him. Startled by their approach from the stupor which hadhitherto weighed on his faculties, the desperation of his purposereturned; he made an effort to tear from its place the lamp which stillfeebly burned, and to fire the pile in defiance of all opposition. Buthis strength, already taxed to the utmost, failed him. Utteringimpotent threats of resistance and revenge, he fell, swooning andhelpless, into the arms of the officers of the Senate who held him back.One of them was immediately dismissed, while his companions remained inthe palace, to communicate with the leaders of the assembly outside.His report concluded, the two ambassadors moved slowly onward,separating themselves from the procession which had accompanied them,and followed only by a few chosen attendants--a mournful and a degradedembassy, sent forth by the people who had once imposed their dominion,their customs, and even their language, on the Eastern and Westernworlds, to bargain with the barbarians whom their fathers had enslavedfor the purchase of a disgraceful peace.

On the departure of the ambassadors, all the spectators still capable ofthe effort repaired to the Forum to await their return, and were joinedthere by members of the populace from other parts of the city. It wasknown that the first intimation of the result of the embassy would begiven from this place; and in the eagerness of their anxiety to hear it,in the painful intensity of their final hopes of deliverance, even deathitself seemed for a while to be arrested in its fatal progress throughthe ranks of the besieged.

In silence and apprehension they counted the tardy moments of delay, andwatched with sickening gaze the shadows lessening and lessening, as thesun gradually rose in the heavens to the meridian point.

At length, after an absence that appeared of endless duration, the twoambassadors re-entered Rome. Neither of them spoke as they hurriedlypassed through the ranks of the people; but their looks of terror anddespair were all-eloquent to every beholder--their mission had failed.

For some time no member of the government appeared to have resolutionenough to come forward and harangue the people on the subject of theunsuccessful embassy. After a long interval, however, the PrefectPompeianus himself, urged partly by the selfish entreaties of hisfriends, and partly by the childish love of display which still adheredto him through all his present anxieties and apprehensions, stepped intoone of the lower balconies of the Senate-house to address the citizensbeneath him.

The chief magistrate of Rome was no longer the pompous and portlypersonage whose intrusion on Vetranio's privacy during the commencementof the siege has been described previously. The little superfluousflesh still remaining on his face hung about it like an ill-fittinggarment; his tones had become lachrymose; the oratorical gestures, withwhich he was wont to embellish profusely his former speeches, were allabandoned; nothing remained of the original man but the bombast of hislanguage and the impudent complacency of his self-applause, which nowappeared in contemptible contrast to his crestfallen demeanour and hisdisheartening narrative of degradation and defeat.

'Men of Rome, let each of you exercise in his own person the heroicvirtues of a Regulus or a Cato!' the prefect began. 'A treaty with thebarbarians is out of our power. It is the scourge of the empire, Alarichimself, who commands the invading forces! Vain were the dignifiedremonstrances of the grave Basilius, futile was the persuasive rhetoricof the astute Johannes, addressed to the slaughtering and vaingloriousGoth! On their admission to his presence, the ambassadors, anxious toawe him into a capitulation, enlarged, with sagacious and commendablepatriotism, on the expertness of the Romans in the use of arms, theirreadiness for war, and their vast numbers within the city walls. Iblush to repeat the barbarian's reply. Laughing immoderately, heanswered, "The thicker the grass, the easier it is to cut!"

'Still undismayed, the ambassadors, changing their tactics, talkedindulgently of their willingness to purchase a peace. At this proposal,his insolence burst beyond all bounds of barbarous arrogance. "I willnot relinquish the siege," he cried, "until I have delivered to me allthe gold and silver in the city, all the household goods in it, and allthe slaves from the northern countries." "What then, O King, will youleave us?" asked our amazed ambassadors. "YOUR LIVES!" answered theimplacable Goth. Hearing this, even the resolute Basilius and the wiseJohannes despaired. They asked time to communicate with the Senate, andleft the camp of the enemy without further delay. Such was the end ofthe embassy; such the arrogant ferocity of the barbarian foe!'

Here the Prefect paused, from sheer weakness and want of breath. Hisoration, however, was not concluded. He had disheartened the people byhis narrative of what had occurred to the ambassadors; he now proceededto console them by his relation of what had occurred to himself, when,after an interval, he thus resumed:--

'But even yet, O citizens of Rome, it is not time to despair! There isanother chance of deliverance still left to us, and that chance has beendiscovered by me. It was my lot, during the absence of the ambassadors,to meet with certain men of Tuscany, who had entered Rome a few daysbefore the beginning of the siege, and who spoke of a project forrelieving the city which they would communicate to the Prefect alone.Ever anxious for the public welfare, daring all treachery from strangersfor advantage of my office, I accorded to these men a secret interview.They told me of a startling and miraculous event. The town of Neveia,lying, as you well know, in the direct road of the barbarians when theymarched upon Rome, was protected from their pillaging bands by a tempestof thunder and lightning terrible to behold. This tempest arose not, asyou may suppose, from an accidental convulsion of the elements, but waslaunched over the heads of the invaders by the express interference ofthe tutelary deities of the town, invocated by the inhabitants, whoreturned in their danger to the practice of their ancient manner ofworship. So said the men of Tuscany; and such pious resources as thoseemployed by the people of Neveia did they recommend to the people ofRome! For my part, I acknowledge to you that I have faith in theirproject. The antiquity of our former worship is still venerable in myeyes. The prayers of the priests of our new religion have wrought nomiraculous interference in our behalf: let us therefore imitate theexample of the inhabitants of Neveia, and by the force of ourinvocations hurl the thunders of Jupiter on the barbarian camp! Let ustrust for deliverance to the potent interposition of the gods whom ourfathers worshipped--those gods who now, perhaps, avenge themselves forour desertion of their temples by our present calamities. I go withoutdelay to propose to the Bishop Innocentius and to the Senate, the publicperformance of solemn ceremonies of sacrifice at the Capitol! I leaveyou in the joyful assurance that the gods, appeased by our returningfidelity to our altars, will not refuse the supernatural protectionwhich they accorded to the people of a provincial town to the citizensof Rome!'

No sounds either of applause or disapprobation followed the Prefect'snotable proposal for delivering the city from the besiegers by thepublic apostasy of the besieged. As he disappeared from their eyes, theaudience turned away speechless. An universal despair now overpoweredin them even the last energies of discord and crime; they resignedthemselves to their doom with the gloomy indifference of beings in whomall mortal sensations, all human passions, good or evil, wereextinguished. The Prefect departed on his ill-omened expedition topropose the practice of Paganism to the bishop of a Christian church;but no profitable effort for relief was even suggested, either by thegovernment or the people.

And so this day drew in its turn towards a close--more mournful and moredisastrous, more fraught with peril, misery, and gloom, than the daysthat had preceded it.

The next morning dawned, but no preparations for the ceremonies of theancient worship appeared at the Capitol. The Senate and the bishophesitated to incur the responsibility of authorising a publicrestoration of Paganism; the citizens, hopeless of succour, heavenly orearthly, remained unheedful as the dead of all that passed around them.

There was one man in Rome who might have succeeded in rousing theirlanguid energies to apostasy; but where and how employed was he?

Now, when the opportunity for which he had laboured resolutely, thoughin vain, through a long existence of suffering, degradation, and crime,had gratuitously presented itself more tempting and more favourable thaneven he in his wildest visions of success had ever dared to hope--wherewas Ulpius? Hidden from men's eyes, like a foul reptile, in hislurking-place in the deserted temple--now raving round his idols in thefury of madness, now prostrate before them in idiot adoration--weakerfor the interests of his worship, at the crisis of its fate, than theweakest child crawling famished through the streets--the victim of hisown evil machinations at the very moment when they might have led him totriumph--the object of that worst earthly retribution, by which thewicked are at once thwarted, doomed, and punished, here as hereafter,through the agency of their own sins.

Three more days passed. The Senate, their numbers fast diminishing inthe pestilence, occupied the time in vain deliberations or in moodysilence. Each morning the weary guards looked forth from the ramparts,with the fruitless hope of discerning the long-promised legions fromRavenna on their way to Rome; and each morning devastation and deathgained ground afresh among the hapless besieged.

At length, on the fourth day, the Senate abandoned all hope of furtherresistance and determined on submission, whatever might be the result.It was resolved that another embassy, composed of the whole actingSenate, and followed by a considerable train, should proceed to Alaric;that one more effort should be made to induce him to abate his ruinousdemands on the conquered; and that if this failed, the gates should bethrown open, and the city and the people abandoned to his mercy indespair.

As soon as the procession of this last Roman embassy was formed in theForum, its numbers were almost immediately swelled, in spite ofopposition, by those among the mass of the people who were still able tomove their languid and diseased bodies, and who, in the extremity oftheir misery, had determined at all hazards to take advantage of theopening of the gates, and fly from the city of pestilence in which theywere immured, careless whether they perished on the swords of the Gothsor languished unaided on the open plains. All power of enforcing orderhad long since been lost; the few soldiers gathered about the senatorsmade one abortive effort to drive the people back, and then resigned anyfurther resistance to their will.

Feebly and silently the spirit-broken assembly now moved along the greathighways, so often trodden, to the roar of martial music and the shoutsof applauding multitudes, by the triumphal processions of victoriousRome; and from every street, as it passed on, the wasted forms of thepeople stole out like spectres to join it.

Among these, as the embassy approached the Pincian Gate, were two,hurrying forth to herd with their fellow-sufferers, on whose fortunes inthe fallen city our more particular attention has been fixed. Toexplain their presence on the scene (if such an explanation be required)it is necessary to digress for a moment from the progress of eventsduring the last days of the siege to the morning when Antonina departedfrom Vetranio's palace to return with her succour of food and wine toher father's house.

The reader is already acquainted, from her own short and simplenarrative, with the history of the closing hours of her mournful nightvigil by the side of her sinking parent, and with the motives whichprompted her to seek the palace of the senator, and entreat assistancein despair from one whom she only remembered as the profligate destroyerof her tranquility under her father's roof. It is now, therefore, mostfitting to follow her on her way back through the palace gardens. Noliving creature but herself trod the grassy paths, along which shehastened with faltering steps--those paths which she dimly remembered tohave first explored when in former days she ventured forth to follow thedistant sounds of Vetranio's lute.

In spite of her vague, heavy sensations of solitude and grief, thisrecollection remained painfully present to her mind, unaccountablymingled with the dark and dreary apprehension which filled her heart asshe hurried onward, until she once more entered her father's dwelling;and then, as she again approached his couch, every other feeling becameabsorbed in a faint, overpowering fear, lest, after all her perseveranceand success in her errand of filial devotion, she might have returnedtoo late.

The old man still lived--his weary eyes opened gladly on her, when shearoused him to partake of the treasured gifts from the senator'sbanqueting table. The wretched food which the suicide-guests haddisdained, and the simple flask of wine which they would have carelesslyquaffed at one draught, were viewed both by parent and child as thesaving and invigorating sustenance of many days. After having consumedas much as they dared of their precarious supply, the remainder wascarefully husbanded. It was the last sign and promise of life to whichthey looked--the humble yet precious store in which alone they beheldthe earnest of their security, for a few days longer, from the pangs offamine and the separation of death.

And now, with their small provision of food and wine set like a beaconof safety before their sight, a deep, dream-like serenity--the sleep ofthe oppressed and wearied faculties--arose over their minds. Under itsmysterious and tranquilising influence, all impressions of the gloom andmisery in the city, of the fatal evidences around them of the durationof the siege, faded away before their perceptions as dim retiringobjects, which the eye loses in vacancy.

Gradually, as the day of the first unsuccessful embassy declined, theirthoughts began to flow back gently to the world of bygone events whichhad crumbled into oblivion beneath the march of time. Her firstrecollections of her earliest childhood revived in Antonina's memory,and then mingled strangely with tearful remembrances of the last wordsand looks of the young warrior who had expired by her side, and withcalm, solemn thoughts that the beloved spirit, emancipated from thesphere of shadows, might now be hovering near the quiet garden-gravewhere her bitterest tears of loneliness and affliction had been shed, ormoving around her--an invisible and blessed presence--as she sat at herfather's feet and mourned their earthly separation!

In the emotions thus awakened, there was nothing of bitterness oragony--they calmed and purified the heart through which they moved. Shecould now speak to the old man, for the first time, of her days ofabsence from him, of the brief joys and long sorrows of her hours ofexile, without failing in her melancholy tale. Sometimes her fatherlistened to her in sorrowful and speechless attention; or spoke, whenshe paused, of consolation and hope, as she had heard him speak amonghis congregation while he was yet strong in his resolution to sacrificeall things for the reformation of the Church. Sometimes resigninghimself to the influence of his thoughts, as they glided back to thetimes that were gone, he again revealed to her the changing events ofhis past life--not as before, with unsteady accents and wandering eyes;but now with a calmness of voice and a coherence of language whichforbade her to doubt the strange and startling narrative that she heard.

Once more he spoke of the image of his lost brother (as he had partedfrom him in his boyhood) still present to his mind; of the country thathe had quitted in after years; of the name that he had changed--fromCleander to Numerian--to foil his former associates, if they stillpursued him; and of the ardent desire to behold again the companion ofhis first home, which now, when his daughter was restored to him, whenno other earthly aspiration but this was unsatisfied, remained at theclose of his life, the last longing wish of his heart.

Such was the communion in which father and daughter passed the hours oftheir short reprieve from the judgment of famine pronounced against thecity of their sojourn; so did they live, as it were, in a quiet intervalof existence, in a tranquil pause between the toil that is over and thetoil that is to come in the hard labour of life.

But the term to these short days of repose after long suffering andgrief was fast approaching. The little hoard of provision diminished asrapidly as the stores that had been anxiously collected before it; and,on the morning of the second embassy to Alaric, the flask of wine andthe bowl of food were both emptied. The brief dream of security wasover and gone; the terrible realities of the struggle for life had begunagain!

Where or to whom could they now turn for help? The siege stillcontinued; the food just exhausted was the last food that had been lefton the senator's table; to seek the palace again would be to riskrefusal, perhaps insult, as the result of a second entreaty for aid,where all power of conferring it might now but too surely be lost. Suchwere the thoughts of Antonina as she returned the empty bowl to itsformer place; but she gave them no expression in words.

She saw, with horror, that the same expression of despair, almost offrenzy, which had distorted her father's features on the day of herrestoration to him, now marked them again. Once more he totteredtowards the window, murmuring in his bitter despondency against thedelusive security and hope which had held him idle for the interests ofhis child during the few days that were past. But, as he now looked outon the beleaguered city, he saw the populace hastening along the gloomystreet beneath, as rapidly as their wearied limbs would carry them, tojoin the embassy. He heard them encouraging each other to proceed, toseize the last chance of escaping through the open gates from thehorrors of famine and plague; and caught the infection of therecklessness and despair which had seized his fellow-sufferers from oneend of Rome to the other.

Turning instantly, he grasped his daughter's hand and drew her from theroom, commanding her to come forth with him and join the citizens intheir flight, ere it was too late. Startled by his words and actions,she vainly endeavoured, as she obeyed, to impress her father with thedread of the Goths which her own bitter experience taught her to feel,now that her only protector among them lay cold in the grave. WithNumerian, as with the rest of the people, all apprehension, all doubt,all exercise of reason, was overpowered by the one eager idea ofescaping from the fatal precincts of Rome.

So they mingled with the throng, herding affrightedly together in therear of the embassy, and followed in their ranks as best they might.

The sun shone down brightly from the pure blue sky; the wind bore intothe city the sharp threatening notes of the trumpets from the Gothiccamp, as the Pincian Gate was opened to the ambassadors and their train.With one accord the crowd instantly endeavoured to force their way outafter them in a mass; but they now moved in a narrow space, and wereopposed by a large reinforcement of the city guard. After a shortstruggle they were overpowered, and the gates were closed. Some few ofthe strongest and the foremost of their numbers succeeded in followingthe ambassadors; the greater part, however, remained on the inner sideof the gate, pressing closely up to it in their impatience and despair,like prisoners awaiting their deliverance, or preparing to force theirescape.

Among these, feeblest amid the most feeble, were Numerian and Antonina,hemmed in by the surrounding crowd, and shut out either from flight fromthe city or a return to home.

CHAPTER 24. THE GRAVE AND THE CAMP.

While the second and last embassy from the Senate proceeds towards thetent of the Gothic king, while the streets of Rome are deserted by allbut the dead, and the living populace crowd together in speechlessexpectation behind the barrier of the Pincian Gate, an opportunity is atlength afforded of turning our attention towards a scene from which ithas been long removed. Let us now revisit the farm-house in thesuburbs, and look once more on the quiet garden and on Hermanric'sgrave.

The tranquility of the bright warm day is purest around the retired pathleading to the little dwelling. Here the fragrance of wild flowers risespleasantly from the waving grass; the lulling, monotonous hum of insectlife pervades the light, steady air; the sunbeams, intercepted here andthere by the clustering trees, fall in irregular patches of brightnesson the shady ground; and, saving the birds which occasionally passoverhead, singing in their flight, no living creature appears on thequiet scene, until, gaining the wicket-gate which leads into the farm-house garden, we look forth upon the prospect within.

There, following the small circular footpath which her own perseveringsteps have day by day already traced, appears the form of a solitarywoman, pacing slowly about the mound of grassy earth which marks thegrave of the young Goth.

For some time she proceeds on her circumscribed round with as muchundeviating, mechanical regularity, as if beyond that narrow space rosea barrier which caged her from ever setting foot on the earth beyond.At length she pauses in her course when it brings her nearest to thewicket, advances a few steps towards it, then recedes, and recommencesher monotonous progress, and then again breaking off on her round,finally succeeds in withdrawing herself from the confines of the grave,passes through the gate, and following the path to the high-road, slowlyproceeds towards the eastern limits of the Gothic camp. The fixed,ghastly, unfeminine expression on her features marks her as the samewoman whom we last beheld as the assassin at the farm-house, but beyondthis she is hardly recognisable again. Her formerly powerful andupright frame is bent and lean; her hair waves in wild, white locksabout her shrivelled face; all the rude majesty of her form hasdeparted; there is nothing to show that it is still Goisvintha hauntingthe scene of her crime but the savage expression debasing hercountenance and betraying the evil heart within, unsubdued as ever inits yearning for destruction and revenge.

Since the period when we last beheld her, removed in the custody of theHuns from the dead body of her kinsman, the farm-house had been theconstant scene of her pilgrimage from the camp, the chosen refuge whereshe brooded in solitude over her fierce desires. Scorning to punish awoman whom he regarded as insane for an absence from the tents of theGoths which was of no moment wither to the army or to himself, Alarichad impatiently dismissed her from his presence when she was broughtbefore him. The soldiers who had returned to bury the body of theirchieftain in the garden of the farm-house, found means to inform hersecretly of the charitable act which they had performed at their ownperil, but beyond this no further intercourse was held with her by anyof her former associates.

All her actions favoured their hasty belief that her faculties weredisordered, and others shunned her as she shunned them. Her dailyallowance of food was left for her to seek at a certain place in thecamp, as it might have been left for an animal too savage to becherished by the hand of man. At certain periods she returned secretlyfrom her wanderings to take it. Her shelter for the night was not theshelter of her people before the walls of Rome; her thoughts were nottheir thoughts. Widowed, childless, friendless, the assassin of herlast kinsman, she moved apart in her own secret world of bereavement,desolation, and crime.

Yet there was no madness, no remorse for her share in accomplishing thefate of Hermanric, in the dark and solitary existence which she now led.From the moment when the young warrior had expiated with his death hisdisregard of the enmities of his nation and the wrongs of his kindred,she thought of him only as of one more victim whose dishonour and ruinshe must live to requite on the Romans with Roman blood, and matured herschemes of revenge with a stern resolution which time, and solitude, andbodily infirmity were all powerless to disturb.

She would pace for hours and hours together, in the still night and inthe broad noonday, round and round the warrior's grave, nursing hervengeful thoughts within her, until a ferocious anticipation of triumphquickened her steps and brightened her watchful eyes. Then she wouldenter the farm-house, and, drawing the knife from its place ofconcealment in her garments, would pass its point slowly backwards andforwards over the hearth on which she had mutilated Hermanric with herown hand, and from which he had advanced, without a tremor, to meet thesword-points of the Huns. Sometimes, when darkness had gathered over theearth, she would stand--a boding and menacing apparition--upon the graveitself, and chaunt, moaning to the moaning wind, fragments of obscureNorthern legends, whose hideous burden was ever of anguish and crime, oftorture in prison vaults, and death by the annihilating sword--minglingwith them the gloomy story of the massacre at Aquileia, and her fiercevows of vengeance against the households of Rome. The forager, on hislate return past the farm-house to the camp, heard the harsh, droningaccents of her voice, and quickened his onward step. The venturesomepeasant from the country beyond, approaching under cover of the night tolook from afar on the Gothic camp, beheld her form, shadowy andthreatening, as he neared the garden, and fled affrighted from theplace. Neither stranger nor friend intruded on her dread solitude. Thefoul presence of cruelty and crime violated undisturbed the scenes oncesacred to the interests of tenderness and love, once hallowed by thesojourn of youth and beauty!

But now the farm-house garden is left solitary, the haunting spirit ofevil has departed from the grave, the footsteps of Goisvintha havetraced to their close the same paths from the suburbs over which theyoung Goth once eagerly hastened on his night journey of love; andalready the walls of Rome rise--dark, near, and hateful--before hereyes. Along these now useless bulwarks of the fallen city she wanders,as she has often wandered before, watching anxiously for the firstopening of the long-closed gates. Let us follow her on her way.

Her attention was now fixed only on the broad ramparts, while she passedslowly along the Gothic tents towards the encampment at the PincianGate. Arrived there, she was aroused for the first time from her apathyby an unwonted stir and confusion prevailing around her. She lookedtowards the tent of Alaric, and beheld before it the wasted andcrouching forms of the followers of the embassy awaiting their sentencefrom the captain of the Northern hosts. In a few moments she gatheredenough from the words of the Goths congregated about this part of thecamp to assure her that it was the Pincian Gate which had given egressto the Roman suppliants, and which would therefore, in all probability,be the entrance again thrown open to admit their return to the city.Remembering this, she began to calculate the numbers of the conqueredenemy grouped together before the king's tent, and then mentally addedto them those who might be present at the interview proceeding within--mechanically withdrawing herself, while thus occupied, nearer and nearerto the waste ground before the city walls.

Gradually she turned her face towards Rome: she was realising a daringpurpose, a fatal resolution, long cherished during the days and nightsof her solitary wanderings. 'The ranks of the embassy,' she muttered,in a deep, thoughtful tone, 'are thickly filled. Where there are manythere must be confusion and haste; they march together, and know nottheir own numbers; they mark not one more or one less among them.'

She stopped. Strange and dark changes of colour and expression passedover her ghastly features. She drew from her bosom the bloody helmet-crest of her husband, which had never quitted her since the day of hisdeath; her face grew livid under an awful expression of rage, ferocity,and despair, as she gazed on it. Suddenly she looked up at the city--fierce and defiant, as if the great walls before her were mortal enemiesagainst whom she stood at bay in the death-struggle.

'The widowed and the childless shall drink of thy blood!' she cried,stretching out her skinny hand towards Rome, 'though the armies of hernation barter their wrongs with thy people for bags of silver and gold!I have pondered on it in my solitude, and dreamed of it in my dreams! Ihave sworn that I would enter Rome, and avenge my slaughtered kindred,alone among thousands! Now, now, I will hold to my oath! Thou blood-stained city of the coward and the traitor, the enemy of thedefenceless, and the murderer of the weak! thou who didst send forth toAquileia the slayers of my husband and the assassins of my children, Iwait no longer before thy walls! This day will I mingle, daring allthings, with thy returning citizens and penetrate, amid Romans, thegates of Rome! Through the day will I lurk, cunning and watchful, inthy solitary haunts, to steal forth on thee at nights, a secret ministerof death! I will watch for thy young and thy weak once in unguardedplaces; I will prey, alone in the thick darkness, upon thy unprotectedlives; I will destroy thy children, as their fathers destroyed atAquileia the children of the Goths! Thy rabble will discover me andarise against me; they will tear me in pieces and trample my mangledbody on the pavement of the streets; but it will be after I have seenthe blood that I have sworn to shed flowing under my knife! Myvengeance will be complete, and torments and death will be to me asguests that I welcome, and as deliverers whom I await!'

Again she paused--the wild triumph of the fanatic on the burning pilewas flashing in her face--suddenly her eyes fell once more upon thestained helmet-crest; then her expression changed again to despair, andher voice grew low and moaning, when she thus resumed:--

'I am weary of my life; when the vengeance is done I shall be deliveredfrom this prison of the earth--in the world of shadows I shall see myhusband, and my little ones will gather round my knees again. The livinghave no part in me; I yearn towards the spirits who wander in the hallsof the dead.'

For a few minutes more she continued to fix her tearless eyes on thehelmet-crest. But soon the influence of the evil spirit revived in allits strength; she raised her head suddenly, remained for an instantabsorbed in deep thought, then began to retrace her steps rapidly in thedirection by which she had come.

Sometimes she whispered softly, 'I must be doing ere the time fail me:my face must be hidden and my garments changed. Yonder, among thehouses, I must search, and search quickly!' Sometimes she reiteratedher denunciations of vengeance, her ejaculations of triumph in herfrantic project. At the recapitulation of these the remembrance ofAntonina was aroused; and then a bloodthirsty superstition darkened herthoughts, and threw a vague and dreamy character over her speech.

When she spoke now, it was to murmur to herself that the victim who hadtwice escaped her might yet be alive; that the supernatural influenceswhich had often guided the old Goths, on the day of retribution, mightstill guide her; might still direct the stroke of her destroyingweapon--the last stroke ere she was discovered and slain--straight tothe girl's heart.

Thoughts such as these--wandering and obscure--arose in close, quicksuccession within her; but whether she gave them expression in word andaction, or whether she suppressed them in silence, she never wavered orhalted in her rapid progress. Her energies were braced to allemergencies, and her strong will suffered them not for an instant torelax.

She gained a retired street in the deserted suburbs, and looking roundto see that she was unobserved, entered on of the houses abandoned byits inhabitants on the approach of the besiegers. Passing quicklythrough the outer halls, she stopped at length in one of the sleepingapartments; and here she found, among other possessions left behind inthe flight, the store of wearing apparel belonging to the owner of theroom.

From this she selected a Roman robe, upper mantle, and sandals--the mostcommon in colour and texture that she could find--and folding them upinto the smallest compass, hid them under her own garments. Then,avoiding all those whom she met on her way, she returned in thedirection of the king's tent; but when she approached it, branched offstealthily towards Rome, until she reached a ruined building half-waybetween the city and the camp. In this concealment she clothed herselfin her disguise, drawing the mantle closely round her head and face; andfrom this point--calm, vigilant, determined, her hand on the knifebeneath her robe, her lips muttering the names of her murdered husbandand children--she watched the high-road to the Pincian Gate.

There for a short time let us leave her, and enter the tent of Alaric,while the Senate yet plead before the Arbiter of the Empire for mercyand peace.

At the moment of which we write, the embassy had already exhausted itspowers of intercession, apparently without moving the leader of theGoths from his first pitiless resolution of fixing the ransom of Rome atthe price of every possession of value which the city contained. Therewas a momentary silence now in the great tent. At one extremity of it,congregated in a close and irregular group, stood the wearied andbroken-spirited members of the Senate, supported by such of theirattendants as had been permitted to follow them; at the other appearedthe stately forms of Alaric and the warriors who surrounded him as hiscouncil of war. The vacant space in the middle of the tent was strewnwith martial weapons, separating the representatives of the two nationsone from the other; and thus accidentally, yet palpably, typifying thefierce hostility which had sundered in years past, and was still tosunder for years to come, the people of the North and the people of theSouth.

The Gothic king stood a little in advance of his warriors, leaning onhis huge, heavy sword. His steady eye wandered from man to man amongthe broken-spirited senators, contemplating, with cold and cruelpenetration, all that suffering and despair had altered for the worse intheir outward appearance. Their soiled robes, their wan cheeks, theirtrembling limbs were each marked in turn by the cool, sarcasticexamination of the conqueror's gaze. Debased and humiliated as theywere, there were some among the ambassadors who felt the insult thussilently and deliberately inflicted on them the more keenly for theirvery helplessness. They moved uneasily in their places, and whisperedamong each other in low and bitter accents.

At length one of their number raised his downcast eyes and broke thesilence. The old Roman spirit, which long years of voluntary frivolityand degradation had not yet entirely depraved, flushed his pale, wastedface as he spoke thus:--

'We have entreated, we have offered, we have promised--men can do nomore! Deserted by our Emperor and crushed by pestilence and famine,nothing is now left to us but to perish in unavailing resistance beneaththe walls of Rome! It was in the power of Alaric to win everlastingrenown by moderation to the unfortunate of an illustrious nation; but hehas preferred to attempt the spoiling of a glorious city and thesubjugation of a suffering people! Yet let him remember, thoughdestruction may sate his vengeance, and pillage enrich his hoards, theday of retribution will yet come. There are still soldiers in theempire, and heroes who will lead them confidently to battle, though thebodies of their countrymen lie slaughtered around them in the streets ofpillaged Rome!'

A momentary expression of wrath and indignation appeared on Alaric'sfeatures as he listened to this bold speech; but it was almostimmediately replaced by a scornful smile of derision.

'What! ye have still soldiers before whom the barbarian must tremble forhis conquests!' he cried. 'Where are they? Are they on their march, orin ambush, or hiding behind strong walls, or have they lost their way onthe road to the Gothic camp? Ha! here is one of them!' he exclaimed,advancing towards an enfeebled and disarmed guard of the Senate, whoquailed beneath his fierce glance. 'Fight, man!' he loudly continued;'fight while there is yet time, for imperial Rome! Thy sword is gone--take mine, and be a hero again!'

With a rough laugh, echoed by the warriors behind him, he flung hisponderous weapon as he spoke towards the wretched object of his sarcasm.The hilt struck heavily against the man's breast; he staggered and fellhelpless to the ground. The laugh was redoubled among the Goths; butnow their leader did not join in it. His eye glowed in triumphant scornas he pointed to the prostrate Roman, exclaiming--

'So does the South fall beneath the sword of the North! So shall theempire bow before the rule of the Goth! Say, as ye look on these Romansbefore us, are we not avenged of our wrongs? They die not fighting onour swords; they live to entreat our pity, as children that are interror of the whip!'

He paused. His massive and noble countenance gradually assumed athoughtful expression. The ambassadors moved forward a few steps--perhaps to make a final entreaty, perhaps to depart in despair; but hesigned with his hand in command to them to be silent and remain wherethey stood. The marauder's thirst for present plunder, and theconqueror's lofty ambition of future glory, now stirred in strongconflict within him. He walked to the opening of the tent, andthrusting aside its curtain of skins, looked out upon Rome in silence.The dazzling majesty of the temples and palaces of the mighty city, asthey towered before him, gleaming in the rays of the unclouded sunlight,fixed him long in contemplation. Gradually, dreams of a future dominionamid those unrivalled structures, which now waited but his word to bepillaged and destroyed, filled his aspiring soul, and saved the cityfrom his wrath. He turned again toward the shrinking ambassadors--in avoice and look superior to them as a being of a higher sphere--and spokethus:--

'When the Gothic conqueror reigns in Italy, the palaces of her rulersshall be found standing for the places of his sojourn. I will ordain alower ransom; I will spare Rome.'

A murmur arose among the warriors behind him. The rapine anddestruction which they had eagerly anticipated was denied them for thefirst time by their chief. As their muttered remonstrances caught hisear, Alaric instantly and sternly fixed his eyes upon them; and,repeating in accents of deliberate command, 'I will ordain a lowerransom; I will spare Rome,' steadily scanned the countenances of hisferocious followers.

Not a word of dissent fell from their lips; not a gesture of impatienceappeared in their ranks; they preserved perfect silence as the kingagain advanced towards the ambassadors and continued--

'I fix the ransom of the city at five thousand pounds of gold; at thirtythousand pounds of silver.'

Here he suddenly ceased, as if pondering further on the terms he shouldexact. The hearts of the Senate, lightened for a moment by Alaric'sunexpected announcement that he would moderate his demands, sank withinthem again as they thought on the tribute required of them, andremembered their exhausted treasury. But it was no time now toremonstrate or to delay; and they answered with one accord, ignorantthough they were of the means of performing their promise, 'The ransomshall be paid.'

The king looked at them when they spoke, as if in astonishment that menwhom he had deprived of all freedom of choice ventured still to assertit by intimating their acceptance of terms which they dared not decline.The mocking spirit revived within him while he thus gazed on thehelpless and humiliated embassy; and he laughed once more as he resumed,partly addressing himself to the silent array of the warriors behindhim--

'The gold and silver are but the first dues of the tribute; my armyshall be rewarded with more than the wealth of the enemy. You men ofRome have laughed at our rough bearskins and our heavy armour, you shallclothe us with your robes of festivity! I will add to the gold andsilver of your ransom, four thousand garments of silk, and threethousand pieces of scarlet cloth. My barbarians shall be barbarians nolonger! I will make patricians, epicures, Romans of them!'

The members of the ill-fated embassy looked up as he paused, in muteappeal to the mercy of the triumphant conqueror; but they were not yetto be released from the crushing infliction of his rapacity and scorn.

'Hold!' he cried, 'I will have more--more still! You are a nation offeasters;--we will rival you in your banquets when we have stripped youof your banqueting robes! To the gold, the silver, the silk, and thecloth, I will add yet more--three thousand pounds weight of pepper, yourprecious merchandise, bought from far countries with your lavishwealth!--see that you bring it hither, with the rest of the ransom, tothe last grain! The flesh of our beasts shall be seasoned for us likethe flesh of yours!'

He turned abruptly from the senators as he pronounced the last words,and began to speak in jesting tones and in the Gothic language to thecouncil of warriors around him. Some of the ambassadors bowed theirheads in silent resignation; others, with the utter thoughtlessness ofmen bewildered by all that they had seen and heard during the interviewthat was now close, unhappily revived the recollection of the brokentreaties of former days, by mechanically inquiring, in the terms of pastformularies, what security the besiegers would require for the paymentof their demands.

'Security!' cried Alaric fiercely, instantly relapsing as they spokeinto his sterner mood. 'Behold yonder the future security of the Gothsfor the faith of Rome!' and flinging aside the curtain of the tent, hepointed proudly to the long lines of his camp, stretching round all thatwas visible of the walls of the fallen city.

The ambassadors remembered the massacre of the hostages of Aquileia, andthe evasion of the payment of tribute-money promised in former days, andwere silent as they looked through the opening of the tent.

'Remember the conditions of the ransom,' pursued Alaric in warningtones, 'remember my security that the ransom shall be quickly paid! Soshall you live for a brief space in security, and feast and be merryagain while your territories yet remain to you. Go! I have spoken--itis enough!'

He withdrew abruptly from the senators, and the curtain of the tent fellbehind them as they passed out. The ordeal of the judgment was over;the final sentence had been pronounced; the time had already arrived togo forth and obey it.

The news that terms of peace had been at last settled filled the Romanswho were waiting before the tent with emotions of delight, equallyunalloyed by reflections on the past or forebodings for the future.Barred from their reckless project of flying to the open country by theGoths surrounding them in the camp, shut out from retreating to Rome bythe gates through which they had rashly forced their way, exposed intheir helplessness to the brutal jeers of the enemy while they waited ina long agony of suspense for the close of the perilous interview betweenAlaric and the Senate, they had undergone every extremity of suffering,and had yielded unanimously to despair when the intelligence of theconcluded treaty sounded like a promise of salvation in their ears.

None of the apprehensions aroused in the minds of their superiors by thevastness of the exacted tribute now mingled with the unreflectingecstasy of their joy at the prospect of the removal of the blockade.They arose to return to the city from which they had fled in dismay,with cries of impatience and delight. They fawned like dogs upon theambassadors, and even upon the ferocious Goths. On their departure fromRome they had mechanically preserved some regularity in their progress,but now they hurried onward without distinction of place or disciplineof march--senators, guards, plebeians, all were huddled together in thedisorderly equality of a mob.

Not one of them, in their new-born security, marked the ruined buildingon the high-road; not one of them observed the closely-robed figure thatstole out from it to join them in their rear; and then, with stealthyfootstep and shrouded face, soon mingled in the thickest of their ranks.The attention of the ambassadors was still engrossed by theirforebodings of failure in collecting the ransom; the eyes of the peoplewere fixed only on the Pincian Gate; their ears were open to no soundsbut their own ejaculations of delight. Not one disguised stranger only,but many, might now have joined them in their tumultuous progress, alikeunquestioned and unobserved.

So they hastily re-entered the city, where thousands of heavy eyes werestrained to look on them, and thousands of attentive ears drank in theirjoyful news from the Gothic camp. Then were heard in all directions thesounds of hysterical weeping and idiotic laughter, the low groans of theweak who died victims of their sudden transport, and the confusedoutbursts of the strong who had survived all extremities, and at lastbeheld their deliverance in view.

Still silent and serious, the ambassadors now slowly penetrated thethrong on their way back to the Forum; and as they proceeded the crowdgradually dispersed on either side of them. Enemies, friends, andstrangers, all whom the ruthless famine had hitherto separated ininterests and sympathies, were now united together as one family, by theexpectation of speedy relief.

But there was one among the assembly that was now separating who stoodalone in her unrevealed emotions, amid the rejoicing thousands around